Spring has always felt like a performance. Too bright, too deliberate, too carefully arranged to appear soft when everything beneath it is sharpened to a point. The air is thick with sweetness, cloying in a way that attempts to dull instinct rather than satisfy it, and I have never trusted anything that tries so hard to appear harmless.

I walk beside my father in silence, posture precise, expression controlled, every movement measured to reflect exactly what is expected of me. Beron does not look at me, and I do not look at him. This meeting is shaped into something political and useful, stripped of anything that resembles truth. Hybern advances. Alliances shift. We are here to observe, nothing more.

The thought settles easily—familiar, practiced, unshaken—as we are led deeper into the estate. Gold and green line the corridors, guards positioned with rigid discipline, courtiers lingering just beyond direct engagement, listening without appearing to listen. It is a game I know well, which is why the moment something feels wrong, I recognize it immediately. It is not sound or movement or anything obvious—it is recognition, sharp and instinctive, a certainty that settles before confirmation.

She should not be here.

I do not turn at once. That would be careless. Instead, I allow my awareness to widen just enough to account for the presence I have already identified. My pace does not falter. My expression does not shift. But I know. And when I do look—brief, precise, controlled—it is enough.

Silver against stone. Black lace where there should be color. Stillness where everything else insists on bloom. She leans against a pillar as though it were made for her, untouched by the sweetness of this place, unaltered by it.

Vyrethra in Spring.

The contradiction is immediate and absolute. She is wrong here—not misplaced, never that—but wrong in the way a blade would be wrong laid among flowers. She does not belong to Spring. She does not belong anywhere. And yet she chose this.

That is what settles beneath everything else. She chose to leave. Not just me. Everything. No word. No warning. No resistance. Just absence.

I know why.

The knowledge is not something I avoid. I crossed a line—quietly, strategically, in a way that served its purpose. Placating my father. Allowing the attention of Autumn Ladies to linger where it was expected. Letting it go just far enough to be useful. I did not stop it. That was enough. For anyone else, it would have meant nothing. For her, it was disqualifying.

So she removed herself. Completely.

I had expected distance. I had not expected her to sever herself from the Night Court entirely.

“Ah,” Tamlin says smoothly, as though he has been waiting for the moment my attention would betray itself. “You see her... My Viper”

That stills me. She is not his.. I do not look at him. My gaze returns forward, posture unchanged, control absolute, giving nothing away. But he continues, and there is no mistaking the intent behind it.

“You know what she is,” he says, not a question but a statement of fact. “There are few in Prythian who could match her where it matters.”

No guessing. No uncertainty. He understands exactly what stands within his court

“She is not of Spring,” he adds, almost lightly, though the weight beneath it is deliberate. “But she stands here by choice. That is enough.”

Choice. Yes. That has always been the only thing that matters where she is concerned

I do not look at her again, though I feel the exact point in the room where she stands as clearly as if I were facing her. There is no shift from her, no acknowledgment, no reaction to my presence at all. As though I am no different from the others in the room. As though I never was

“She aligns where it suits her,” I say, tone even, measured, revealing nothing. “A useful trait.”

Tamlin’s amusement is subtle, edged with something closer to pride. “She is useful,” he replies. “And far more controlled than most realize."

For the first time, I do not know her game, or what exactly this new alignment means.. but I know the Viper